New York Review of Books Classics has acquired World rights to David R. Bunch’s out-of-print collection MODERAN, for publication in 2017. The deal was made by Jeff VanderMeer through VanderMeer Creative, acting on behalf of the Bunch estate, and the acquiring editor is Sara Kramer. Bunch’s highly original Moderan stories were prized by such iconic editors as Judith Merril, Harlan Ellison, and Cele Goldsmith. The stories were sometimes controversial with readers and published in both genre and literary magazines from the 1950s through 1970s.

In the Moderan universe, half-organic cybernetic human beings try to survive in a dystopian future in which the Earth has been mostly mined out and asphalted over. These hard-edged yet lyrical stories—as if Philip K. Dick had collaborated with e.e. cummings—are more topical today than when written in what they have to say about our relationship to the environment and each other.

“I’m very happy that my father’s legacy will live on with a new generation of readers and with such a prestigious publishing house,” said Phyllis Deckert, Bunch’s daughter. “We hope it signals a resurgence of interest in my father’s work in general.”

“It’s rare that a writer comes recommended to you as ‘singular,’ ‘mind-blowing,’ a ‘neglected master’ and lives up to the hype,” said editor Sara Kramer. “But that’s just what happened in the case of David R. Bunch. Suffice to say we at NYRB Classics are pretty excited to have a part in introducing him and his Moderan stories to the wider world.”

Both the estate and VanderMeer Creative also are grateful to Matthew Cheney for his efforts in writing about Bunch online and in being an advocate for the reprinting of his works.

As announced yesterday, VanderMeer Creative is funding a full year of The Octavia Project in Brooklyn. We are also providing a full-ride scholarship for one 2017 Octavia Project student to attend the teen SF/Fantasy writing camp, Shared Worlds, that we have helped run for almost a decade. We think the sharing of ideas between the Octavia Project and Shared Worlds–one science-based with some fiction components and the other fiction-based with some science components–will be an interesting and useful thing.

You can read more about this great STEM program for teen girls at their site–as well as this interview with Chana Porter at Electric Literature. Please consider donating to this amazing and useful organization. This is literally about nourishing the minds of our future scientists and creatives.

VanderMeer Creative, Inc., is the umbrella corporation for many of our creative activities, including our public events. All of our books are copyrighted to VanderMeer Creative and we maintain a robust backlist of e-books and physical books through our Cheeky Frawg imprint, including a devotion to translated and international fiction.

Through VanderMeer Creative, we also serve as agents for Michael Cisco and the estate of David R. Bunch, as well as for the iconic Finnish writer Leena Krohn (in some territories).

In the coming year, VanderMeer Creative will announce additional initiatives and funding in keeping with core values of supporting creativity, innovative fiction, diversity in publishing, and international fiction–as well as environmental causes and the intersection of social justice and global warming issues.

As Ann and I announced on social media last week, we’re thrilled to have sold another behemoth of an anthology, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, to editor Tim O’Connell at Vintage Books!! Tentatively scheduled for publication in 2018 and covering roughly the period 1850 up to World War II. Thanks to our agent, Sally Harding, and the Cooke Agency. This will be our fourth huge anthology project, following this year’s The Big Book of Science Fiction, The Time Traveler’s Almanac, and the World Fantasy Award-winning The Weird.

Will this anthology include not just your favorite classics from the English language, but also translations from all over the world? Yes. Will it include never-before-translated new stories? Yes. Will it include the best of the Decadents and the Surrealists in a fantastical vein? Oh yes, most certainly. We hope to widen our net on the translation side, focusing on areas of the world that have been underrepresented in prior anthologies.

As ever, you have to look at the evidence before you commit, but we’re confident there will be a few surprises.

We’re also very happy to have Dominik Parisien on board as an editorial consultant for this project. Dominik is the co-editor of stellar anthologies such as the current Starlit Wood.

May I suggest for the holidays the gift of a century of science fiction? Our Big Book of SF came out over the summer and was a huge hit–as the reviews below suggest! Over 100 authors and 750,000 words of fiction. Available from your local bookseller or Amazon.

“A definitive volume of the genre. . . . This is a big book, and it’s an essential tome for readers who are dedicated SF fans or casual newcomers alike. Do they manage to redefine science fiction? I think so.” —The Verge

“The Big Book of Science Fiction is exactly what it says it is, nearly 1,200 pages of stories by the genre’s luminaries, like H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as lesser-known authors. . . . [it] prizes diversity of all kinds, and translates work by several writers into English—some for the first time.” —The New York Times Book Review

“How big is big? In this case, we’re talking nearly 1,200 double-columned pages, dozens of representative short classics of science fiction, and newly translated work from around the world. There are surprises, too: Did you know that W.E.B. Du Bois wrote sf? That’s just one indication that the VanderMeers hope to establish a more culturally diverse science fiction canon.” —The Washington Post (10 Hidden Gems)

“An enormous anthology of science fiction put together by two of our sharpest purveyors of the genre. . . . This volume is a perfect mix of the classic and the unexpected.” —Flavorwire
“Everything about this book is exciting. First, it’s huge—some 750,000 words fill its 1,200 pages. Second, it’s been compiled by one of sci-fi’s coolest power couples—she’s a distinguished editor (Tor.com, Weird Tales), he’s a superb writer (2014’s Southern Reach trilogy). And finally, it’s not just another survey of white men in science fiction (aka Phillip K.’s dicks). For every Wells and Dick and George R.R. Martin, there’s work by Le Guin, Butler, and Katherine MacLean—not to mention stories from all over the world, from China (Liu Cixin) to Argentina (Silvina Campo). Gift it to a friend, then buy one for yourself.” —Jason Kehe, Wired (This Summer’s Must-Read Books)

“Borges once imagined an infinite book with pages of infinite thinness. The Vandermeers approach that event horizon with this double-columned paperback of more than 1,200 pages, containing some 750,000 words in more than 100 stories. . . . A review of a few hundred words can only begin to suggest both the contents and quality of this excellent collection of short fiction. The Vandermeers sidestep territorial quagmires by defining sci-fi, simply and effectively, as fiction that depicts the future in a stylized or realistic manner. This definition allows them a wide range of choices. . . . This book could serve as a portal to years of pleasurable and thought-provoking reading.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Science fiction anthologies are a dime a dozen, but there’s that one that comes across every now and again that is truly essential. This is the case for Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s Big Book of Science Fiction, an anthology that goes back to the genre’s roots in pulp fiction, all the way up to the end of the 20th Century, picking the best stories from around the world (including a number never before translated into English) . . . We took one look at this massive anthology’s Table of Contents, and fell in love at first sight.” —io9

“Whether you’re a life-long fan of science fiction or layperson diving deep into a new genre, this incredible anthology offers a comprehensive genre education between two covers. In more than 1,000 pages and upwards of 100 stories, the VanderMeers have compiled a truly representative history of SF from its early beginnings to its myriad modern incarnations. . . . This is an unparalleled achievement, and undoubtedly one of the most important books you’ll buy this year.” —Barnes and Noble Booksellers’ Picks

“When it comes to massive and comprehensive anthologies focused on a specific strain of fiction, the editorial team of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer has set the bar remarkably high.” —LitHub

“Ann and Jeff VanderMeer are a powerhouse editing team; their recent anthology of weird fiction helped define a genre, and took a smart historical global view while doing it. This anthology does a similar feat to science fiction, with an expansive aesthetic and work from a host of writers, including W.E.B. DuBois, Cixin Liu, Ursula K. Le Guin, and George R.R. Martin.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“These stories were chosen for continuing relevance and arranged to interplay like voices in a great conversation: shifting and offering new insights. . . . Throughout this collection, every piece of wrack, scavenger bird, and sorceress contains multitudes.” —Locus Magazine

“A fun and solid genre education.” —Library Journal (Starred Review)

“At 105 stories—taken from around the world and since the genre’s very beginnings to its recent heights—and more than 1,000 pages, this extraordinary anthology handily earns its billing as the ‘ultimate collection’ of science fiction. . . . The VanderMeers, longtime SF/F editors (The Time Traveler’s Almanac and many others), provide a critical survey of the field as well as incisive biographies of the contributors.” —Publishers Weekly(Starred Review)

“If your readerly appetite is not quite novel-sized, you’ll definitely want to check out this month’s short fiction offerings. If you only choose one title, make it The Big Book of Science Fiction edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer.” —Kirkus

This post is one of several about my experiences in the Finger Lakes District in upstate New York while serving as the Trias writer-in-residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva).

Hobart and William Smith was lucky to have Amelia Gray as a guest as part of the 2016-2017 Trias Reading Series, which I’m curating. Gray gave one of the best readings I’ve ever seen and also spoke frankly to the students in my class about variety of writing-related issues. Below you’ll find the transcript of my introduction to the event, which is also an introduction to the work of Amelia Gray. The next guest in the series will be Ottessa Moshfegh in the spring. – Jeff V.

***

I first encountered Amelia Gray’s fiction when I saw her collection Gutshot in the Yale University bookstore—at the front counter, as a staff recommendation. Despite this, the cashier tried to dissuade me from buying the book.

He asked me as I checked out, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want that? It’s really weird. Really weird.”

I thought about that for about half a second and said, “Yes. Yes. I want that. I want like five or six or seven copies of that.” Because I was pretty sure with that kind of endorsement I was getting the good stuff. The pure, undiluted stuff. No filler. Not cut with excuses or prevarication or pre-fab fabulation.

And I was right.

Amelia Gray is the real deal—an absurdist by nature who ranges from stories like “Fifty Ways to Eat Your Lover” that blow up our expectations of what a short story can be while having interesting things to say about both the body and relationships…to sly dark tales like “The Year of the Snake” that mythologize science and can be taken for the delights on the surface or for deeper things lurking beneath.

The disturbing “House Heart” could be read as a deconstruction of the Gothic ghost story, but saying that is inadequate and throws too much of a bone to those who like a story to “mean” something: the story gets under the skin, resists being analyzed in the sense that the weird rituals at its core seem familiar to modern life and yet alien. We cannot quite place the story on any map and by this we know, although Gray also engages in renovations, that this is innovation.

I would also humbly position her fiction, from my readings, as a triangulation of not just the absurd, but the surreal and the weird—because the world is absurd and surreal and weird. With each of those sensibilities existing in different proportions depending on the story.

As well as a psychological element, as if she’s tapped into something in the subconscious that creates an immediate reaction in the reader. I’m reminded strongly of another iconoclastic talent, the surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington, whose own dark tales combine these elements and were, when she wrote them, very unconventional—striking a chord with readers while existing outside of the mainstream.

Have I said yet that Gray’s fiction, like Carrington’s, is often is sly and funny in a sideways sense—once you become normalized to the unsettling images and the unusual, unique details that—wherever you are lucky enough to find them—are always, always a gift to the reader.

Alongside that absurdist sense of humor, inhabiting all of Gray’s fiction, is the proverbial restless curiosity and a quest, never self-conscious, to find ways to subvert reader expectations, to give the reader not what they expected but what they secretly needed. A bit of a jolt to the system.

And that is at least one reason why I love Gray’s work—because of the charged images at the core of so many of these stories, the images that linger in the mind and, connected to character, make even the dying man in the title story, “Gutshot,” sympathetic or humane or oddly relatable. That make a giant snake smashing through a town and dividing it into North Snake and South Snake have no need of rational explanation. That make a person living in the airducts of a house so riveting and horrifying at the same time.

And how despite being a curmudgeonly, jaded reader of the uncanny and the surreal and the absurd, I’m thankful that there are writers lke Gray who still manage to surprise me, to make me uneasy…to wake me up.

No wonder then that Gray’s fiction has been compared to the work of David Lynch—the ultimate compliment because it’s another way of saying “we don’t know where amongst the constellations to place this writer.”

No wonder that her fiction has been praised from coast to coast, by both the New York Times and Los Angeles Times—while appearing in some of this country’s most prestigious magazines, including The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and Tin House. No wonder that Gutshot recently won the $10,000 Young Lions Prize from the New York Public Library.

I’ve been blessed as part of serving as the 2016-2017 Trias Writer in Residence–blessed to curate a reading series in addition to all of the other wonderful opportunities. This fall, I kicked things off talking about the Southern Reach trilogy and sharing some of the inspiration for the novels (as well as reading). Then we had Dexter Palmer come in and read from Version Control, his great time travel novel from Vintage. And just this week, Amelia Gray came in and gave a corker of a reading to end the fall series of Trias readings. Both Dexter and Amelia dropped by my class to talk to the students and stayed long enough to have a sense of the area.

Expert on the Grotesque Nancy Hightower and photographer Kyle Cassidy also spoke to my class this semester, along with a Skype call by Julia Elliott. Those visits have been recorded so I can post transcripts shortly. In the meantime, please enjoy the video from all three fall events.

In the spring, the series continues with Ottessa Moshfegh, a recent finalist for the Man-Booker Prize. That promises to be another scintillating event. My deep and heartfelt thanks to Professor Melanie Hamilton, who runs the Trias program, and to Susan Gage, who is instrumental in making sure these events are a success.

You can find all of my posts about the writing residency experience here.

I must admit to being forever grateful to Hobart and William Smith Colleges in general and Provost Titilayo Ufomata and Professor Melanie Hamilton in particular for offering me the Trias Residency for 2016-2017. It has already been a life-changing experience and a major catalyst for energizing both my fiction and nonfiction. Ann and I have only been here eight weeks, but we already feel very connected to the Finger Lakes District and the college. Everyone we have met on faculty has been wonderful, and we’ve had great, substantive conversations about any number of topics from the literary to the scientific.

We’ve also enjoyed the comforts of the residency house, which include some great wildlife and bird viewing. One night, just for example, I walked outside to see a possum, then a raccoon, some deer, an and skunk! We’ve also had any number of woodpeckers, nuthatches, and other birds visit the front and backyard and had some fun observing always entertaining marmots. Clearly parties are going on outside of the Trias House that we’re not being invited to!

(Dexter Palmer’s class visit.)

In these two months, we’ve also done a lot! What, specifically? The following is just a partial list. As ever, much of this is a team effort. Ann and I work together and consult on a daily basis, and so anything I am able to accomplish while here is in fact due in part to Ann’s help and her counsel.

Taught the first half of a class taking the principles set out in Wonderbook about organic and mechanical ways to teach creative writing, including “mimicry” and “secrets” modules. This also included having the students rewrite the same Nabokov story from their unique point of view and provide an in-depth critique of the results, in preparation for the in-class critique sessions of their original stories in November-December.

Brought in Dexter Palmer to talk to my students and give a reading, while prepping for later visits by Amelia Gray, and Ottessa Moshfegh for the Trias Reading Series.

Gave a reading myself as part of the Trias series.

Hosted photographer Kyle Cassidy, who provided students with visual ideas for writing exercises and their fiction.

(Comparing Tutuola and Metcalf for class discussion during our Month of Mimicry)

In the spirit of Peter Trias’ generous funding of the Trias residency, our little contribution to that vision has been to donate a projector and screen to the Trias classroom and put a portion of my salary aside to buy books for my students that aren’t on the syllabus but of potential interest, ranging from my career guide Booklife to the great graphic novel Safari Holiday and works by Tove Jansson.

In terms of the writing that the residency is there to support, I’ve had a very fertile period of being creative in these two months. I’ve written the following:

A 30,000 novella entitled “The Journals of Doctor Mormeck” (about half of it finished here at the residency house).

A short-short titled “Marmot Mountain” for an anthology.

20,000 words on a new novel about an alt-history world where A. Crowley rules a Franco-Germanic empire with the reanimated head of Napoleon as his sidekick.

Four nonfiction articles for various publications including LitHub and the Atlantic’s web site.

A chapter of my nonfiction book on global warming and storytelling.

Coming up, there’s a lot on the agenda for the last seven weeks of the semester.

The second half of my class, including guest visits, a month of freedom, and turning in their portfolios.

Continued work on my new novel.

Amelia Gray’s visit to HWS for a class visit and public reading.

Class and college visits by special guest Nancy Hightower, an expert on the grotesque in literature and art.

A trip with some of my students to the Toronto International Book Festival, where I’ll be participating on programming and the students will have unique opportunities to sit down with agents, editors, and authors like Emma Donoghue.

Observation of songbird banding on the shores of Lake Ontario.

At least two days of helping out with raptor surveying at the Montezuma state park.

Visits with additional environmental science classes.

Participating on a panel about ecology and global warming.

Working with the environmental sciences department to create, for the spring semester, an interdisciplinary series of creative writing and nonfiction exercises related to developing a deep understanding of landscape and place.

Prep-work for mentoring three or four students in the spring and coming back on a couple of trips to host Moshfegh’s reading and some other activities.

In addition, we’ve had the opportunity to hike at about a dozen state and national parks in the area and visited many, many fascinating towns to familiarize ourselves with the area. We even had the opportunity to experience a grape festival. Here are a few photographs from the experience thus far.

This post is one of several about my experiences in the Finger Lakes District in upstate New York while serving as the Trias writer-in-residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva).

Dexter Palmer read from Version Control, his latest novel, as part of the Trias Reading Series at HWS on October 6. This was my introduction, which focuses on Version Control, which I believe is one of the best novels of 2016.

Good evening. Welcome to the second installment of the 2016-2017 Trias reading series, which I am so lucky to get to curate. Thanks very much to Melanie Hamilton and everyone at Hobart and William Smith for their support and many kindnesses. And, of course, thanks to Peter Trias.

Tonight we have a marvelous writer reading from his new novel from Vintage—followed by a Q&A and a signing session.

Our guest tonight, Dexter Palmer, holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University, where he completed his dissertation on the novels of James Joyce, William Gaddis, and Thomas Pynchon (and where he also staged the first academic conference ever held at an Ivy League university on the subject of video games).

I first “met” Dexter Palmer when the New York Times assigned me his first book The Dream of Perpetual Motion for review. I loved the novel, which was sophisticated, smart, so well-written, and very different in how it mixed retrofuturism with nods to Shakespeare’s The Tempest and The Wizard of Oz. That novel appeared on several year’s best lists and was one of Kirkus’s Books of the Year.

(The view from the deck of The William Scandling, headed out onto Lake Seneca, on the hunt for tiny freshwater shrimp.)

This post is one of several about my experiences in the Finger Lakes District in upstate New York while serving as the Trias writer-in-residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva).

One of the unique opportunities Ann and I have had this semester is to accompany biologists on a night expedition aboard The William Scandling, the Hobart and William Smith Colleges research vessel. The mission? To collect from Seneca Lake deep water freshwater shrimp that rise toward the surface at night, and test them for, among other things, mercury levels.

Biologist Dr. Meghan Brown was kind enough to invite us along, joking in an email that freshwater shrimp would not cause as much of a problem for me as the fake freshwater squid I’d created in a story several years ago (reaction to which had included vitriol from a cephalopod expert).

Brown teaches at HWS, serves as the chair of the biology department, and her areas of emphasis include biological limnology. Accompanying Brown were post-doctoral research scientist Dr. Roxanne Razavi, from the Finger Lakes Institute, and HWS honors student Kayleigh Buffington; the expedition served to help Buffington in her studies. Dave Brown piloted The William Scandling with Anthony Madia as the crew member. This was just one of several expeditions Buffington was making for her honors research.

We thought The William Scandling a very impressive ship and found the process of seeking out and gathering shrimp samples to be fascinating. Mostly, we just observed, trying to stay out of the way of Brown, Razavi, and Buffington, who had the process down to a precise set of tasks carried out with well-practiced ease.

First, Dave Brown, with Madia’s help, sent the collection tube or net down over one hundred feet and then brought it up slowly, the mesh and shape of the net designed to specifically gather critters as tiny as the shrimp or smaller, and nothing else. Then Buffington, Brown, and Razavi would collect the gathered water in plastic containers and bring it into the cabin to examine the water and sift through it. The expedition needed to bring back a sample of at least 60 shrimp to test for mercury levels.

As Razavi said in an interview when she joined the Finger Lakes Institute, “The mercury cycle is very complex. Mercury is naturally occurring in the environment, but it is also emitted into the environment from human sources. [Since] there are a lot of gaps on what we know about mercury in the Finger Lakes,” the goal is to uncover the local concentrations of mercury, as “this is a really important region for fisheries, agriculture, and tourism.” (Back in 2014, at a prior job, Razavi was described as a “river detective” uncovering clues about pollution in the St. Lawrence River.)

The net device was sent down again and again, each time coming up with a few shrimp or none, and the tension mounted, something I hadn’t expected. Would the team gather enough shrimp before needing to head back in?! I must say, Ann and I were on the edge of our seats waiting to find out. But, finally, Buffington had her sample and then the ship headed back to shore, stopping only to gather another sample, of invasive mussels.

It was a great night–to have our first extended view of the lake from the water be at night and in the context of getting to watch as Brown, Razavi, and Buffington go expertly through each step–making sure not to contaminate samples–and also getting to talk to them about the ecology of the lake.

Seneca Lake definitely has pollution, due in part to agricultural and wastewater runoff, but Brown told us that, considering everything, the lake continues to function pretty well and be full of life. She also told us about a trip to a lake in Guatemala where their experience with the Finger Lakes was useful in analyzing pollution issues. Brown was kind enough to show us some of the plankton brought up with the shrimp, and to explain the process of carefully documenting the vital statistics of the captured shrimp as well as analysis of the water they were found in.

Along the way, we also learned some fascinating things about earthworm conferences, marmots, and invasive species. In fact, just last year, a grant allowed Dr. Brown to trap and study the bloody red shrimp, an invasive species fairly new to the Finger Lakes District.

Below the cut you can find photos and more information. Some photos in this blog post taken by Roxanne Razavi. Due to the requirement not to use flash so as not to disturb the shrimp, these photos are, of course, somewhat grainy.

(Banding in progress; later, I held this owl gently but firmly around the chest and the legs before placing her on a branch to adjust and then fly off.)

This post is one of several forthcoming about experiences in the Finger Lakes District in upstate New York as the Trias writer-in-residence at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva).

My experience observing the banding of saw-whet owls near the house of biologist John Confer outside of Ithaca, New York, had a little bit of everything really: unexpected discovery, the police, and, of course, owls. Since the Finger Lakes District is rich territory for birders and my fiction often includes ecological themes—my first journals as a kid growing up in Fiji didn’t contain personal entries but instead bird sightings–it seemed like potentially a unique experience and one close to my heart. And I accepted the invite not so much to learn how to band owls as to get a broader sense of bird migration studies and a better sense of the area. What I find fascinating about upstate New York, too, is the way in which everything is so much more self-contained than North Florida because the distances aren’t as vast and yet there’s a great variety of landscapes and micro-climates.

I’ve always liked owls, and enjoyed observing barred owls, screech owls, and great horned owls on hikes around Tallahassee. I once even came across an image so weird I didn’t know what I was looking at at first…until it resolved into the form of a tortoise…and the great horned owl on its back, pecking away at the tortoise’s soft bits. All of this owl observation culminating in a great horned owl having a pretty large role in my novel Acceptance.

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer has been named the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) from FSG, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. The trilogy also prompted the New Yorker to call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 28 other countries, with Paramount Pictures acquiring the movie rights. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp . His forthcoming novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux is titled Borne. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...